Crippling bacteria infection sweeps Flint, Michigan, as residents are too scared to wash in lead-infected water

Flint, Michigan, has confirmed an outbreak of a highly infectious bacterial disease.
Dozens of residents have contracted shigellosis, a virus that causes bloody diarrhea, fever, and nausea. It is usually the result of poor hygiene.
It is the latest health crisis to hit the city two years after lead infected the water system, leaving scores of residents with potentially life-long side effects.
City health officials claim it is the direct result of residents being too scared to wash themselves with possibly contaminated water.
As with many bacterial infections, tests show all strains of... read more

Related news

Black and Hispanic adults in the US have higher rates of dehydration than whites due to a lack of access to safe, clean tap water, researchers say.
Public health professors have been scrambling to identify other communities at risk of chemical...

Michigan governor Rick Snyder on Tuesday ordered the Michigan National Guard to help distribute supplies in response to the city of Flint’s lead-tainted water crisis.
In an executive order issued late Tuesday, Snyder activated the reserve military...

Lead-infected water has poisoned children in 3,000 neighborhoods across the United States, a new report reveals.
The findings show the life-threatening public health hazard affects far more areas than just Flint, Michigan - which burst into the world...

Lee-Anne Walters and her family in Flint, Michigan, drank water laced with hazardous levels of lead contamination for nearly eight months, beginning in the spring of 2014.
The water was brown. Her three-year-old son Gavin broke out in a rash every...

It might seem counterintuitive that Flint, Michigan’s declaration that there are dangerously high levels of lead in the city’s drinking water – and in the blood of the city’s children – is a positive thing. The contamination of the city’s drinking...

Mouthwash may be able stop gonorrhoea from spreading, researchers believe.
Gonorrhoea is a bacteria that is spread sexually - but studies show people can carry the infection in their throats for months on end without suffering any symptoms.
Those...